Liu Sheng, Li Dongxin, Chen Xiuying
Institute of Studies for the Greater Bay Area, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou City, 510006, Guangdong Province, People's Republic of China.
School of Economics and Trade, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou City, 510006, Guangdong Province, People's Republic of China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2023 May;30(22):62625-62640. doi: 10.1007/s11356-023-26345-2. Epub 2023 Mar 22.
The behavior of short-term debt for long-term investment (SFLI) will probably worsen the business status of the enterprise and increase the financial risk of the enterprise. Will the credit term structure of heavily polluting enterprises improve or worsen as the environmental regulatory pressure increases? This study takes the implementation of China's new Environmental Protection Law (NEPL) as a quasi-natural experiment to evaluate the impact of environmental regulatory pressure on the short-term debt for long-term investment behavior of heavy-polluting enterprises by the approach of Difference-in-Differences (DID). The results reveals that the NEPL significantly helps heavy-polluting enterprises achieve a more sustainable development mode by alleviating their maturity mismatch problem between investment and financing of heavy-polluting enterprises, which is conducive to reducing business risks. The impact mechanisms test shows that environmental regulatory pressure is likely to inhibit their investment and financing behavior, and might generate a crowding-out effect of innovation. When considering the heterogeneity of enterprise, the impact of the NEPL is not significant in state-owned enterprises, key-monitoring enterprises, and large-scale enterprises. However, the non-consistent effect as well as the innovation crowding-out effect, need more collaborative governance countermeasures. This paper reveals the consequences of environmental regulation policies from the view of corporate's credit term structure and provides new evidence for supporting the Porter hypothesis through addressing the dilemma of SFLI in heavily polluting enterprises.
短期债务用于长期投资（SFLI）行为可能会恶化企业经营状况并增加企业财务风险。随着环境监管压力增大，重污染企业的信贷期限结构会改善还是恶化？本研究以中国新《环境保护法》（NEPL）的实施为准自然实验，采用双重差分法（DID）评估环境监管压力对重污染企业短期债务用于长期投资行为的影响。结果表明，新《环境保护法》通过缓解重污染企业投资与融资期限错配问题，显著助力重污染企业实现更可持续的发展模式，这有利于降低经营风险。影响机制检验表明，环境监管压力可能抑制其投融资行为，并可能产生创新挤出效应。考虑企业异质性时，新《环境保护法》对国有企业、重点监控企业和大型企业的影响不显著。然而，这种不一致效应以及创新挤出效应，需要更多协同治理对策。本文从企业信贷期限结构视角揭示了环境规制政策后果，并通过解决重污染企业短期债务用于长期投资困境为支持波特假说提供了新证据。
